


the laws of geometry

by snsk



Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: M/M, University AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-30
Updated: 2017-01-30
Packaged: 2018-09-20 23:00:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,337
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9519824
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/snsk/pseuds/snsk
Summary: But after the next lesson Phil was fine and touched Dan’s horn hoodie easily and teased him about his wet curls, and Dan wondered when the simply wanting to drop to his knees and suck him off as he explained Byrne v. Boadle had turned into wanting to turn his head and kiss the pads of his fingers.





	

**Author's Note:**

> if you're worried about possible power imbalances notgood things etc refer to the end notes. A Spoiler Awaits you. but not really. happy birthday phil.

Dan skidded into the lecture hall and nearly fell through the doorway.  There was only one person in the hall; a guy who was sitting in one of the seats in the middle. Dan made his way to him.

“God, I thought I was late,” he said, frowning. He groaned when he checked his phone again, looked at the time proper. “Chris must’ve changed my- fuck. Teach isn’t even here yet.”

The guy looked interestedly at him. “Do your friends often play these pranks on you?”

“No,” Dan said. “Well, he means well. I probably would’ve overslept and missed the first day of class, that’s me all over.” He remembered his manners. “I’m Dan, by the way.”

The guy’s eyes were bright when he said. “Phil,” and took Dan’s hand. Someone with dreads slouched into the class and slumped into the nearest desk. They proceeded to place their books on the desk, their head on the books, and fall back into sleep.

Dan felt that, really, that would totally be him right now, but the guy’s hand was warm and he had such a nice smile. “Why are you so early, anyway?” he asked.

“Making a good first impression,” said Phil.

“Oh. Teacher's pet much. I mean-” Dan didn't really mean that, it was just his sense of humour, but people didn't get his sense of humour sometimes, he knew that, so he said: “-no, ignore me, I have no filter. Better teacher's pet than probably be kicked out of the class for constant lateness.”

But Phil's eyes were laughing.

As if it was a cue, the rest of the class started streaming in, one after the other, some in groups of friends they’d already made. Phil slipped out of the seat and smiled at Dan, then made his way down, down, to the huge wooden desk in front. The teacher’s desk.

“Welcome to Tort Law,” he said, when the class had quietened down and a slow terrible realisation was dawning upon Dan. “I’m Philip Lester, you guys can call me Mr Lester, or Sir.” He paused, and looked straight at Dan, and looked rather like he was fighting a smile. “Or Phil will do.”

 

“I’m so… how,” Dan said. “How! How does that thought never cross my mind?”

Chris looked sympathetic, inasmuch as a hyena could look sympathetic. It couldn’t. “You poor fuck,” he said kindly. “You called the teacher a teacher’s pet.”

“Yes, okay,” Dan said, willing him to stop rehashing what he already knew.

“And implied you’ll be late for his class and kicked out soon,” Chris continued.

“Nghh,” Dan said. He rolled over to bury his face in his pillow. “‘Snot s’that.”

“English,” Chris advised.

“It’s not just that,” Dan intoned. “He, he. He’s a really good teacher.”

Chris said, slowly, “Good?”

“Ugh,” Dan said. “He’s just so.” Just so- so passionate and articulate and funny, too, and in the second class he’d seen someone grimace in discomfort and clutch at her stomach, and he’d announced a five minute break soon after and spoken to her gently and quietly, and she’d nodded gratefully and left. And god, Dan was already lost in like, half his other classes, but something about Phil - Mr Lester, made him want to listen. He made Tort Law interesting in a way not even Criminal was; he made every case into a story, and Dan just wanted him to never stop talking. He’d been early to all three classes so far.

“-so, so good at teaching,” Dan finished weakly. Chris looked understanding, inasmuch as a hyena could look understanding.

“You want to bone him,” he said kindly.

“Shut up,” Dan said. “No I don’t.”

 

He kind of sort of really did. Phil - he’d given up on Mr Lester in his head because he thought of warm dry hands and storm-sea eyes, he thought _Phil_ \- had set them a quiz the second week, and Dan, because he was now a nerd who hung attentively on to his teacher’s every word, had scored the highest. He’d come extra early the next class, and Phil had handed him his test, and said, “Well done, Dan,” and smiled, and he’d _blushed_.

“Sorry about-” he’d managed, waving a hand that was supposed to encompass last week and his acute embarrassment of his lack of common sense.

“Chris fix your alarm again?” Phil had asked, smiling.

“No, just early,” Dan had said, face still hot.

“Keep it up,” Phil had said, looking right at Dan, warm, and god, god, but then the rest of the class, damn them, it wasn’t a race or anything, they did not have to play Dan like this, started trooping in. And then Phil had started teaching, and managed to mention Dan’s excellent score and take a long swig of his water bottle, lips closing around it, in the same lesson, and he didn’t have to play Dan like this either.

But it was fine, because Dan was a sexually frustrated teenager and all he needed was someone to suck his dick so he would stop wanting to suck his lecturer’s. He informed PJ of this when he met him on Saturday.

“A crush on someone in a position of authority is a completely normal thing,” PJ said sensibly and much less hyena-kind than Chris.

“Thank you, Peej,” Dan said. Chris snorted at this helpful and understanding behaviour, and downed his vodka shot in one, and went after a boy in sparkly, sparkly pants. Dan wished he had that kind of carefree, couldn’t-care-less attitude about things; he tugged at his shirt uncomfortably and felt his hair starting to the curl in the heat of the strobe lights.

“See anyone you like?” PJ shout-asked.

Dan shrugged. It was hard to make anyone else out. He could see someone with a spill of black hair, someone whose pale skin the neon pink glare reflected off of. He looked over at the gyrating crowd and imagined Phil’s eyes dark as he watched Dan dance, and the thought made him hot, made him say, “Hey, let’s-” and lead the way into the pulse of people.

He didn’t hook up with anyone that night, but he did spill into his hand later, furtive and drunk and guilty about it, as his roommate snored a few feet away.

 

Dan had also, extremely unfortunately, developed a habit of lingering over packing his stuff after class until it was just him and Phil in the lecture hall. Phil would be waiting at his desk, small curve of mouth when Dan finally made his way down.

“How was class?” he asked, usually. “Did I suck? Did you absorb anything?”

Phil was weird and terribly endearing, and Dan wanted to lean over and kiss him so badly it hurt. Every class was captivating and complicated and interesting, and Dan absorbed possibly more than he ever had and ever would in any class, probably. Even if he failed the rest of the classes, which he already foresaw as a high possibility, he’d pass this one just because he listened, because Phil clearly cared so much about whether or not they understood. He didn’t know how to put this in words to Phil yet, anyway, so he just said: “Definitely didn’t suck, I promise,” and watched Phil smile at him like the sun dawning, sweet and new.

And then they’d walk together to Phil’s office, which was two floors down, last door, and they’d talk, and this was when Dan found out Phil didn’t much like law as a career but very much liked teaching, and how he did some editing on the side, and played video games and liked Buffy and was marathoning Brooklyn 99, and this was when Dan realised they actually had a shitload in common, and the things they didn’t were things that were strangely complementary, like how it somehow came up in the third month that Phil didn’t like the kernels in popcorn and Dan loved them.

“It’s such a waste,” Dan said, shocked.

“You can eat mine, then, weirdo,” Phil said, and then looked up at Dan, and the next moment seemed to be very absorbed in looking around for his key. They usually walked really slowly; they could spend fifteen minutes going down the stairs instead of using the elevator, they took their time to reach the end of the corridor, but today Phil sped up and said a hurried goodbye to Dan and disappeared inside his office. Usually he’d invite Dan in for a cuppa and a biscuit, too, and Dan would perhaps ask some bullshit question about the lesson to keep up pretences and talk some more. But today Dan stared at the wooden door with Philip Lester, Lecturer, and said, “O...kay,” slowly, and really really hoped he hadn’t fucked up somehow, or accidentally revealed his innermost desires to do dirty, dirty things to him against that huge desk in his room. He hadn’t thought he had, but you never knew, the way he rambled.

But after the next lesson Phil was fine and touched Dan’s horn hoodie easily and teased him about his wet curls, and Dan wondered when the simply wanting to drop to his knees and suck him off as he explained Byrne v. Boadle had turned into wanting to turn his head and kiss the pads of his fingers.

 

“So you see,” Dan said, “I’m letting my feelings out, in the hopes that this will make it easier to get rid of them.”

Chris looked down at him as compassionately as he could. It wasn’t very.

“You can laugh if you want,” Dan said. “I’d laugh.”

Chris did not laugh, which Dan appreciated. He just let out two loud, pointed snorts. “Do you want me to call Peej?”

“I suppose,” Dan said mournfully.

When PJ arrived, he held a whispered conference with Chris to spare Dan’s feelings. This meant that they spoke loudly about Dan right in his ear.

“I see,” PJ said, when Chris had summarised the situation - “Poor bastard thinks he’s in love with his prof” - very succinctly and tactfully. “Dan?”

“I’m not in love,” Dan said, galled into speaking. “I just want suck the soul out of his dick, and then kiss his eyelids in sleep. That came out wrong.”

PJ said, very reassuringly, “You need this class to pass the sem, and he's the only one teaching it.”

“I know, stop trying to be sensible,” Dan said, and laid back on the couch and moaned despairingly until PJ put a yoghurt in his hand and the latest episode of The Royals on.

 

It was a ridiculous kind of idea, anyway, falling in love with his teacher. Phil was 25 and while Dan was 19, thanks to a gap year, he probably thought of Dan as a child who he had to indulge, and even though it didn’t seem so, the way Phil looked at him, sometimes, eyes clear, expression fond, he was probably. Dating someone, you know. That was how delusional Dan probably was.

He was contemplating this despairingly, waiting for the train to town, until a voice said: “Dan?” and he was shaken out of it so thoroughly he almost fell off the bench.

“Phil - Mr Lester,” he said, and then immediately felt silly because he’d never ever called Phil anything other than Phil, except in, like, wet dark 3 am hours he still felt guilty thinking about. Phil, clad in a silver space-y coat with a furry lining, hand closed around a backpack strap and looking unfairly pretty, hair damp with the chill of near-winter, grimaced.

“Cut that out,” he suggested.

Dan smiled.

It turned out Phil wanted to look for a present for his brother, and Dan had felt like exploring Manchester, and then it just, well, made sense for them to get off the train together, discussing Radiohead’s new album and Black Butler. Phil got his brother - Martyn? Dan filed this away for the future - an adventure card game, and his aunt a knitted woollen hat he saw in the store further along the street, and then he said, “There’s this shop you’ll love,” and Dan cooed over the Haru pillow they had on display. But it cost a fucking fortune.

“I’ll actually buy that for you,” Phil offered, amused.

“God, no,” Dan said, “I won’t let you be, like, my _sugar daddy_ ,” and regretted the words as soon as they’d escaped his mouth, because Phil had taken a literal step back, something in his expression changing into something quietly more cautious than it had been a moment earlier.

“I’m an idiot,” Dan said quickly. “I’ll shut up now. I don’t know why I open my mouth.”

Phil smiled, but it was still careful. “I  guess we’ll leave him for another day, then,” he said, and soon they were out in the cold air again, and Dan shivered; his jacket definitely wasn’t thick enough for the coming winter. He was sure Phil would make his excuses and leave, now, sure that he’d properly overstepped his boundaries. But Phil was looking at him, looking straight at him, and he said, “Are you cold?”

Dan gave a noncommittal shrug. He _definitely_ didn't want Phil's pity for a starving student as a substitute for any sort of genuine affection. Phil had probably figured it out by now: the weird, sudden depth of that longing, the exclusivity of it. How Dan latched onto someone and had such a hard time letting go, and this time it was such a hopeless thing. Phil might be kind to Dan, might smile at him and make it look like it meant something sometimes, but he'd still technically always been the pinnacle of professionalism, whatever Dan read into it. Dan suddenly felt very chilly, and very tired, and very much like he wanted to go home, and too much like he needed to be wherever Phil was.

But Phil was shrugging out of his padded coat, and he had an sweater on underneath, dark blue wool and red-grey spaceship. “Oh,” Dan said, “oh, you don’t-” but he was being draped in it, and it was very soft and smelled very much like Phil, like clean clothes and wafts of rich coffee. Phil gently pulled his arms through it.

“There,” he said, quietly. “There, all warm.”

The day had been varying shades of grey and dim, and the sun had somehow set when they weren’t looking, and Dan opened his mouth to say something, but he lost track of it when he realised Phil hadn’t stepped back.

Phil’s cheeks were tinted pink in the breeze, and Dan said, quiet as well, “But you’ll get cold.”

“No, I,” said Phil. He was still watching Dan, brow furrowed a bit, eyes never leaving his face, a wilder storm in the gathering dusk. “I. I’ve got a sweater.”

“That’s nice,” Dan said nonsensically, low, just to keep talking. They were on a rather deserted street, everybody gone in for dinner or to avoid the deepening chill, but at any moment someone would come around the corner, shrieking with laughter. The spell would be broken. “It’s a nice sweater.”

“Thank you,” Phil said, and he smiled, just as he had that first day. “Dan.”

Dan’s stomach flipped over, then back. Over again. Phil was - the way he _looked_ at him.

He held his breath as Phil very, very carefully lifted a hand, and touched the side of his face, fingers trailing over his cheek. Dan held himself very still, so as not to turn his head and kiss them, and Phil’s thumb stroked over the corner of his mouth. Still so, so very gentle. He said “Dan,” again, almost wondering.

Dan wondered if Phil could read it in his eyes. All that naked want. And almost as if in reply, Phil said, “I need you to stay warm, alright," and it sounded like it meant something different.

He stepped back, then, leaving Dan suddenly adrift, but he was not cold anymore, and he thought he could understand, now, and he also felt a lot like this, more than anything else, was home already, in this moment.

 

They did not talk about it. Dan still did well because he could listen to Phil speak endlessly on for days, and they still had tea after class, and they still lingered in that corridor between the stairs and Phil’s door. But nothing changed, because it couldn’t; Dan understood this. There was nothing to do but wait. Once or twice, Phil tried to say: “You should go out this weekend,” or half-heartedly, “Met anyone?”

Dan didn’t want to. Chris tried to drag him to set-ups, pointed out cute Tinder matches. Dan danced, made small talk, collapsed into bed with his jacket on, never followed up. Chris called him an “idiot dumbfuck.”

“Oh well,” Dan said easily.

“He was so hot,” Chris mourned. “And he wanted it so bad.”

“Why didn’t _you_ try it on him, then?” Dan asked, laughing, as PJ watched with understanding eyes.  

Dan did not know how to explain to them that it felt he had known for Phil years, sometimes, and lifetimes in others. They would talk about the Avengers and Dan’s fears and Muse and Phil’s past and the robot uprising, and it was easy in a way he couldn’t explain. It was right. He felt a bit like he had been looking for something all his life, without realising it, and now something had settled in him, bone-deep and ingrained.

 

The day before Christmas break was their last class. Dan lingered over his books as the classroom emptied, then trailed down to where Phil was waiting, small soft curve of lips.

“Dan,” Phil said.

“Mr Lester,” Dan said, very seriously.

Phil smiled. “God, am I going to miss you,” he said.

“You don’t have to,” Dan said. “Texting exists.”

Phil said: “I’ve been thinking.”

Something closed, tight and hurt, in Dan’s chest. Overwhelming embarrassment.  That familiar closing darkness. He’d misread this all along, indulgence as interest, pity as- god. But Phil, always the tide coming in, a sweater on a cold night, a friendly smile in an unfamiliar class, said: “No. Dan. No. I still - you know I still. I think you might be-”

He took a deep breath. “I’ve never felt,” he said, which wasn’t really a sentence. And yet the monsters retreated to their shadowy  corners in Dan’s head again. “Dan, Dan, you know that I,” which wasn’t one either. Dan wanted to kiss him very much. “But I think we need to not contact each other this break. You need to- you need to clear your head, I’ve still been in a position of authority over you, and you’re still- I need you to be sure-”

He was usually so articulate, and this struck somewhere deep inside Dan; that this meant something to Phil, enough to Phil that he had to _know._

“I get it,” Dan said. “No contact. Yeah. But I _am_ sure,” just so Phil could hear it. “That’s not going to change.”

Phil said, “Yes.” He said, “Dan,” just his name, just like that. And it felt like a touch on a winter’s night.

 

Dan played with his dog, watched movies with PJ, beat his brother at Mario Kart; he made private, sappy playlists, started and gave up the gym, and read to his grandma. They had Christmas, quiet, bright, Dan thinking of Phil’s eyes in the snow.

The month went by faster than he’d realised it would. Before he knew it he was in the faded, leaky apartment again, and Chris was promising him he would set fifty alarms for his first class, Civil Procedure, Tuesday, and PJ was coming in with the latest episode of Narcos. But Monday Dan rose early without any alarm’s assistance and got dressed in the glistening new shine of dawn.

“Am I late?” he asked, at the door of the lecture hall.

The only other occupant of the hall took a deep breath, eyes bright, and said, “No.”

**Author's Note:**

> spoiler alert: Nothing Inappropriate Happens. i know. morals and codes of conduct, amirite.
> 
> i'm on tumblr @ snsknene!


End file.
